The Cambodia Daily
August 5, 2013
Independent election monitors and civil society groups submitted a
request to the National Election Committee (NEC) on Friday asking to
review post-election voter rolls and Identity Certificates for Elections
(ICE) forms in seven provinces in which reports of election
irregularities were widespread on July 28.
The Situation Room, a committee of civil society bodies that
monitored the national election, has asked the NEC to disclose the names
of people who voted in these provinces in order to check for cases of
double voting, and to disclose details regarding ICE documentation used
in some areas to assess the level of fraudulent voting, said Koul Panha,
executive director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in
Cambodia (Comfrel).
The provinces include Prey Veng province, where reports of fraudulent
use of ICEs was widespread; Phnom Penh, where monitors suspect high
levels of double voting; and Siem Reap province, where election monitors
witnessed thousands of members of the military being moved around the
province on voting day, Mr. Panha said.
The other provinces with high levels of suspected voting
irregularities and fraud include Battambang, Kompong Cham, Kandal and
Kratie provinces.
Mr. Panha said that Comfrel and other election monitors were
currently compiling their findings and will release a quantitative
report on suspected irregularities in the coming days. However, without
the NEC’s cooperation in reviewing voter names and documentation, a
conclusive investigation of election fraud will not be possible, he
said.
NEC Secretary-General Tep Nytha said Sunday that the organization had
been too busy to consider the request for access to documentation from
the independent election monitors.
“We haven’t checked their request yet because we don’t have time to
check it, we are busy solving complaints,” he said, adding that the NEC
has received only 10 reports of voters using false identification since
the election a week ago.
“For the irregularity reports, our committee will start checking them
on [August] 6,” Mr. Nytha said, adding: “Those issues have not
seriously affected the results of the election.”
However, CNRP representatives in both Prey Veng and Kandal provinces
said that they have received hundreds of complaints about fraudulent
ICEs, double voting and missing names, but have yet to tabulate the
total number of reported irregularities in their provinces. In Phnom
Penh, as of Friday, they said they had received more than 2,000
complaints.
The Situation Room’s request for documentation comes as talks to form
a multi-party committee composed of the CPP and CNRP have broken down,
with the NEC laying blame on the CNRP for its insistence that the U.N.
be involved in the investigation of election results, a request that the
NEC says has no legal precedent.
Hang Puthea, executive director of the Neutral and Impartial
Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia, said that election
monitors were offering an apolitical way for the NEC to bring
credibility to the election process.
“Whether they [the NEC] has this commission [with the CPP and CNRP]
or doesn’t have it, we NGOs have to work our way. We want to solve the
technical problems, not the political problem,” he said.
“We will continue to do our work, and we will show if the NEC likes to cooperate in transparent investigations,” he added.
(Additional reporting by Neou Vannarin)
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